AO3 rocks, as does the parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works. They do a lot of pro bono legal work around free speech and copyright (which can be especially sticky around transformative works). AO3 has drawn ire and appreciation alike for their fierce free speech stance (which is, essentially, if it's against the law to exhibit in the state of New York (or against their TOS e.g. not a fanwork), it must come down. Everything -- EVERYTHING -- else stays.)
I also love another of their programs, Fanlore[0], a treasure trove of obscure internet fanfiction works, social groupings, and tropes. Sort of a combination oral history + TVTropes-esque fanfic breakdown.
Fanfiction is a beautiful thing and a great way to stretch creative writing muscles that can be helpful by being a bit less of a blank canvas than needing to invent characters and locations. Of course, a TON of fanfiction does invent, liberally, but I've seen people insist they can't write creatively, then make something beautiful when you ask them to rewrite a scene in their favorite show or book that they were disappointed with and boom, they just wrote their first fix-it fic[1].
Also, praise be for AO3 having no news feed/algorithm, and instead an incredibly intricate tagging system. Makes it easy to find what you want, avoid what you don't (see free speech commitment), and feel liberated from algorithmic exhaustion.
AO3 is wonderful. I strongly believe that humans have tens of thousands of years of telling and retelling stories. The Odyssey isn't one book, it's something that was composed and collected and retold.
The idea that a company could "own" a story and the characters within is recent. Very recent.
IMO, AO3 continues the human tradition of retelling stories, and we should celebrate that.
This is why I’m a copyright minimalist. 15 years + 5 years extension is my belief. I should be legally allowed to use what I grew up on to tell stories and invent within that world and, if the market enjoys it, make some money doing it. Anything more is various shades of immoral, and the current 95-150yr terms are closer to something from parody than reality.
There could also be a downside to this, lets use Super Mario as an example, what happens when the entire market gets flooded with unofficial Mario games, scammers would no longer have to worry about copyright and can make absolute shovelware to trick old people hoping to buy a Christmas present for their grandchildren etc. Nintendo as a company would be completely helpless against all of this and sure, there could may well be some great games made by people who care, but the cons would outweigh the pros.
trademarks? Nintendo is still protected as Nintendo with its logo and all. We'd start seeing Nintendo's Super Mario and be all "ahh, great, the fun one!"
We've had myths for hundreds of thousand of years without copyright. If it's a choice between capitalism and culture then we should destroy capitalism at a symbolic level.
There's no way to just download all of it, is there? You have to scrape it slowly? I don't mind doing it that way, but flat downloads would be pretty neat. How do mirrors work? Do they run read-through caches?
Makes sense. Somewhat strange (but not too strange since it's not standardized) they don't have a Crawl-Delay except for Slurp. Why not on User-Agent: *
Confusing. Would even prefer a commented crawl delay that specifies in human language since then I could special-case it.
If you all are interested in fanfic, may I direct you to learn about one of my favorite pieces of internet art, my immortal?
And, if you want to delve into the history behind this work of art, oh boy:
https://youtu.be/0JodBp-r9jM
It's nice that this sprung up after the owners of fanfiction.net seemed to completely stop caring about it. It's nice to have a place where the people who run it actually care.
I suppose it won't help to point out to you that it's fiction, none of it actually happened, no person was ever hurt, and this is nowhere close to ”free speech absolutism”.
It’s acceptable on AO3 to write a narrative description of a real person’s actual abuse, including their personal information (see II.F.4.a), and it only “may result in a judgment of harassment” if also the author specifically makes it available to the victim.
It's the written equivalent of deepfake porn - hugely entertaining for the creators, not so much for the victims. Especially if they're teens at school, and the creators are bullying them.
No matter what AO3 thinks, in many countries this immediately crosses the line into criminal harassment.
As for the rest - the fanfic community has been among the loudest criticising AI writing for 'stealing from real artists', which is... not exactly self-aware.
There is no contradiction here. It was founded precisely because LiveJournal started censoring sexually explicit fanfiction involving taboo subjects (particularly incest/rape/minors).
I also love another of their programs, Fanlore[0], a treasure trove of obscure internet fanfiction works, social groupings, and tropes. Sort of a combination oral history + TVTropes-esque fanfic breakdown.
Fanfiction is a beautiful thing and a great way to stretch creative writing muscles that can be helpful by being a bit less of a blank canvas than needing to invent characters and locations. Of course, a TON of fanfiction does invent, liberally, but I've seen people insist they can't write creatively, then make something beautiful when you ask them to rewrite a scene in their favorite show or book that they were disappointed with and boom, they just wrote their first fix-it fic[1].
Also, praise be for AO3 having no news feed/algorithm, and instead an incredibly intricate tagging system. Makes it easy to find what you want, avoid what you don't (see free speech commitment), and feel liberated from algorithmic exhaustion.
[0]: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page
[1]: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fix-it
Isn’t there an “original work” category?
Yeah, now you have a worse problem. A few people like the first chapter you posted, now "oh shit I'd better come up with something good".
A curse on the OP. I was trying so hard to stop thinking about this today.
The idea that a company could "own" a story and the characters within is recent. Very recent.
IMO, AO3 continues the human tradition of retelling stories, and we should celebrate that.
Confusing. Would even prefer a commented crawl delay that specifies in human language since then I could special-case it.
i worked on a project a long time ago and downloaded a bunch of it
https://archiveofourown.org/works/94745346
It’s acceptable on AO3 to write a narrative description of a real person’s actual abuse, including their personal information (see II.F.4.a), and it only “may result in a judgment of harassment” if also the author specifically makes it available to the victim.
The policy is unsafe by design.
No matter what AO3 thinks, in many countries this immediately crosses the line into criminal harassment.
As for the rest - the fanfic community has been among the loudest criticising AI writing for 'stealing from real artists', which is... not exactly self-aware.